


Battles to Come

by undieshogun



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: M/M, Vague Spoilers for Fire Emblem: Fates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-21 08:29:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4822202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/undieshogun/pseuds/undieshogun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Owain is no stranger to war. Ylisse is at peace, but there are battles elsewhere to be fought, and Inigo doesn't plan on letting Owain fight them alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Battles to Come

**Author's Note:**

> this kind of came at me out of nowhere. it's the first thing i've published in a long time, so i'm really hoping it'll kickstart a productive phase for me. owainigo is one of my favorite pairings of all time, and i would like to dedicate this fic to lunar who is always spinning headcanons with me. i hope you guys will love them too after reading this!! enjoy!!

The night before Owain is set to leave, Inigo finds him in the armory.

For all that Owain didn’t know Inigo would visit the palace that evening, he can’t say he’s surprised to see him. Inigo has always been there when Owain needed him most, after all.

Owain tries not to look at Inigo as he strolls into the armory and comes to a stop in front of him, practically standing over him, but there’s something about Inigo’s presence that just draws gazes, demands attention. Perhaps it’s the dancer in him, shy as he is. There was a time when it was under Owain’s gaze that Inigo shrank to the smallest he could be; now, there’s a certain sort of pride that gleams in his eye, straightens his back, when Owain looks at him.

Holding back a sigh, Owain puts down the armor he’s in the middle of polishing and tilts his head up. “Hi.”

Inigo looks...unhappy, to put it lightly. His brows are knit together, as if he’s having trouble understanding what exactly he’s looking at, and his lips are pressed together in what Owain too easily recognizes as his “utterly exasperated with Owain” frown.

“You know,” Inigo begins in a low, deceptively gentle voice, “it’s cute how you still think you can slip away to embark on months-long, life-threatening missions to distant lands without anyone noticing.”

“Actually, I had express permission for this one--”

“By ‘anyone’ I meant _me_.” Inigo leans down, eyes narrowing, to prod Owain in the chest. It doesn’t hurt, but Owain flinches anyway from sheer intimidation, because he knows already that he’s done Inigo wrong.

“I didn’t want to worry you,” he says anyway, a flimsy defense that even he doesn’t buy into.  

“You didn’t want to-? Oh, for the love of Naga, Owain. I thought you’d have learned from the whole Grima fiasco that the only way I could ever not worry about you is if I was right there on the battlefield with you!” The hurt in Inigo’s expression is too easy to see, from the way his eyes scrunch up to the tiny tremble in his lower lip. As much as he’s always spinning his silly  flirts with anyone who will glance twice at him, Inigo has never been anything but honest.

“I know.”

Inigo sighs softly and sits down next to him. He takes his hand and laces their fingers together, callouses against callouses. They’ve been through a lot together, Inigo is saying, and it just makes Owain feel even guiltier.

“You don’t have to leave me behind to protect me, Owain. I trust you to keep me just as safe by your side as I would be behind the walls of any fort.”  

It’s not as if Owain has forgotten what it was like, fighting with Inigo in the war against Grima. They could have fought forever like that, back to back and shoulder to shoulder, blades moving in unison, never faltering. Owain even believed at one point, sword growing heavy as the sky grew dark, that they might truly spend the rest of their lives fighting, and he was glad to have Inigo there. But this--

“This is different,” says Owain. “With Grima, we had the advantage of knowing what to expect and how to stop it, and we had our parents and our friends by our side. _This_ , this is just...me, alone, with no idea what’s coming for me.”

“I’d say that gives me all the more reason for me to be there with you. How could you expect me to let you go into something like that without someone to have your back?”

Unable to come up with a reply, Owain finds his lips curling into a resigned smile, and Inigo smiles back.

“We promised each other, didn’t we? The only way we fight is to fight together,” says Inigo softly, squeezing Owain’s hand. “Besides, what’s this I’ve heard about Severa being in on the whole thing as well? I never thought I’d see the day when you choose her over me.”

“I didn’t--” Owain laughs; Inigo always manages to bring that out of him. “It was Severa’s assignment first. Uncle--er, Exalt Chrom signed me on after he realized there was potential for an alliance with the Nohrians.”

“He could have asked Lucina.”

“He doesn’t really ask Lucina for anything these days, always going on about giving her space, since she’s constantly disappearing off to who knows where.”

Lucina’s decision to leave had surprised Owain most of all, at least initially. He’d been there from the start, watched her devotion to her country grow into something threatened to turn her into a martyr. She had jumped into the portal without hesitation--that wasn’t the first instance Owain thought he might not see her again, but it had been the most fearful. And so it had shocked Owain when, immediately after the end of Grima, Lucina had sheathed Falchion at her hip and walked out of the castle without so much as a goodbye to anyone besides her infant self.

Owain knows now that though she had pretty much single-handedly saved this world, it was not hers to continue devoting herself to--at least, not as Princess Lucina. With her own future lost to her and her cause seen through, she was nothing more than an outsider in this world; they all were. Owain had left the castle not long after realizing this and gone on a long journey with Inigo. They’d seen a lot, learned a lot. But something had brought Owain back, and it was the same thing that had convinced him to accept the Exalt’s request.

The mark on Owain’s forearm seems to tingle, bringing him out of his thoughts. It’s strange, but it always seems to react like that when he thinks about his family. He rubs at it, and Inigo notices.

“This is important to you, isn’t it?”

“I never really had a chance to serve Ylisse before the war started,” said Owain. “As a member of the royal family, I mean. Not just a soldier.”

Inigo brushes his fingers softly over the Mark of Naga. He always touches it gently, as if he’s afraid to hurt Owain.

“It’s never caused me any pain before, you know,” says Owain.

“It’s not that,” says Inigo. He pulls his hand back, but his gaze remains fixed on the mark. “There’s just something powerful about it...like I’m not worthy of touching it.”

Owain huffs a soft laugh. “It’s just a birthmark, Inigo. Well, I mean--it’s not _just_ a birthmark...”

Inigo kisses him on the cheek, chaste and firm. “I know. It’s your birthright, and you’re going to do it and Exalt Chrom proud. _I’m_ proud of you, Owain.”   

“Jeez,” mutters Owain, feeling his face heat up and hiding it behind his hands.

“Aw, feeling shy? That’s not like you,” says Inigo, leaning heavily against Owain and chuckling as Owain groans in protest. Inigo lays a warm hand on the back of his neck, and though his touch is gentle the callouses on his palm are rough against the sensitive skin there. It’s reassuring, being comforted and at the same time reminded that Inigo has held a sword in his hands, been through the same battles Owain has and survived every time alongside him.

“Hey,” says Inigo after a moment of silence, and Owain moves his hands away from his face to see Inigo ducking his head and looking at Owain through his lashes like he only does when he’s waiting.

Owain leans in to kiss Inigo and somewhere in the back of his mind, as their lips touch and they sigh into each other’s mouths, legs shifting and hands moving to familiar places and skin heating, he realizes that he’s always known it was going to turn out like this. Because growing up with Inigo, falling in love with him and being together with him, means coming to learn that Inigo always gets his way in the end, and Inigo has never wanted anything more than to be with the people he cares about.

Owain pulls away to bury his face in Inigo’s shoulder, hugging him tightly enough that Inigo’s breath catches. He doesn’t have to thank him aloud--Owain knows Inigo can feel it in the way he sighs deeply in relief and relaxes into him.

“Did you ever imagine it would come to this? Returning to the battlefield to fight another war that isn’t ours to fight?” says Inigo. His hand has moved up to massage the back of Owain’s neck, moving in slow, kneading motions.

“Nothing says ‘home’ like steel clashing and blood flying,” says Owain. And no, he couldn’t have known he would end up in a situation like this, but he can’t deny that he lives to fight just as much as he fights to live.

“Gods forbid your sword hand ever settle for anything less,” mutters Inigo, and Owain can practically hear him rolling his eyes.

“Say what you want; this sword hand has saved your life more times than you can count.”

“Oh, I know,” says Inigo, his breath fluttering over Owain’s ear. “Still lame that you call it that.”

“You’ll thank me some day for sparing you from its wrath,” says Owain.

Inigo leans back and laughs, bright and unrestrained. Owain knows that laugh, from the way Inigo’s voice pitches up to the way the corners of his eyes crinkle until they close, has had it seared into his memory since the very first time he heard it years ago in the gardens of Castle Ylisse. When the war came, Owain thought he would never hear it again, but it didn’t take him long to discover there was little that could stop Inigo from finding joy in even the smallest of good things. It was the way hearing that laugh always made Owain feel lighter than air that carried him through the hardest parts of the war, and it was the first part of Inigo he fell in love with.  

“You big goof,” says Inigo with the sweetest smile on his face. He cups Owain’s cheek. “I could thank every part of you every day just for existing, sword arm included.”

Owain kisses him again, long and deep, drinking him in like he hasn’t tasted him in years. This, too, brings memories of the war--afternoons spent lurking in the shadows behind the tents, stealing every moment between battles to hold each other, learn as much of each other as they could so they might have something to hold on to, something to remember in case one of them was lost in the coming battles.

It is a desperation Owain hasn’t felt in a long time, and it sits heavy against his ribs as Inigo responds likewise, for they both know that this moment, tinted with fear and heartache, is the first of many they’ll share over the course of their journey to come.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!! please feel free to comment and tell me what you thought of it!!!


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